Category Archives: Heirloom Recipes

These are recipes that have been used for many many years. Some from me and others from family and friends.

Baby Sea Turtle Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

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This is an idea from the Dora the Explorer cookbook for kids. One year I gave each of my oldest four grandkids a cookbook for Christmas. Since then we occasionally have fun recreating recipes from them.

baby sea turtles

Sophia with Clare

First Communion Day

I was in Florida celebrating my granddaughter, Sophia’s 8th birthday and her first Communion. It was a wonderful time with Sophia, her sister, Clare and brother, Oliver, along with parents Isaac and Kara.

Clare and I made cupcakes for Sophia to bring to her class on her birthday. We used a basic frosting that I learned as a child and still love to make and then decorated them with M & M’s and gum drops. Snip the gum drops to use as the tails and use a full gum drop for the head of the turtle. So cute! The kids in Sophia’s class loved them!

Sophia and family

Cream Cheese Frosting
4 TBS butter
4 TBS cream cheese (low fat)
1 tsp almond extract
2 TBS milk
2-3 cups confectioners sugar
2 drops each – green and blue food coloring

Directions
Beat the ingredients, adding the sugar at the end.
Add more milk if it’s too stiff or more sugar if it’s too thin.

Use whatever cupcakes you like.

Oatmeal Walnut Cake with Broiled Coconut Frosting

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The world’s gone mad, it seems. Crazy weather, violence, tragic accidents are all things we cannot control. When I feel as if my world is out of control, I bake something, using a recipe from long ago. Long before we lived in a world where cameras caught our every move and crazies lurked around every corner. No, food can’t soothe our anxious minds or feed our sense of security, but it can bring us back to a calmer place, if even for a few moments.

The scent of this cake will make you think of your grandmother, I’ll bet. The original recipe came from an old church cookbook my Grandma Zola gave me in 1976. I cut out some of the sugar and added a few extra ingredients to give it more fiber and flavor. It’s melt in the mouth goodness that you can easily whip up and enjoy with someone you love.
The cake is wonderful even without the frosting. It’s a moist and dense cake that you can alter by add other nuts, chocolate chips or dried fruit of your choice.

baked cake without frosting

frosting before broiling


gooey after broiling


The frosting is rather thin as you spread it on the cake. After you broil it, it’s still gooey and it will thicken as it cools.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup quick oats

3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 eggs
1 tsp soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup dates, pitted and chopped (optional)

Directions
Mix boiling water and oats in a saucepan and let them stand for 20 min.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Grease a 9″ x 13″ baking pan.
With a mixer, cream the butter and sugars
Add the eggs and beat until well blended.
Add flour, soda, cinnamon and salt.
Finally, add oatmeal and mix just until incorporated.
Fold in the walnuts and dates.
Bake for 25 – 30 minutes.

coconut walnut frosting

Coconut Frosting
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1/4 cup milk or half and half
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts (or more, to taste)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup coconut

oatmeal cake slice

Directions
Melt the butter in a small saucepan.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until blended.
Heat just until the frosting starts to boil, then take it off the heat.

When the cake has finished baking, take it out of the oven and pour the frosting evenly over the cake.
Put the cake under the broiler for about a minute until it bubbles all over. Watch it carefully so it doesn’t burn.

It will be gooey, but that’s ok. You can poke a few holes in the cake with a fork after you’ve broiled the frosting to allow some of it to seep into the cake. The caramel frosting is a great pairing with the moist, nutty cake. The dates are optional, but if you love dates, don’t omit them.
Eat it warm or cooled. This cake is a classic, pure and simple.

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Double Chocolate Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

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almonds echo the almond extract in the icing

OK, lent is over. Get baking! This cookie contains no hidden health benefits, other than pure pleasure. I made them for two families I am baking for and I hope they delighted in the taste and textures of the rich chocolate with the delicate almond flavor of the frosting.

If you don’t want all the frosting, you can simply make them as a drop cookie and enjoy the soft fudge flavor.
The original recipe for the cookies is adapted from the Betty Crocker Cookbook, circa 1972. Yes, a heritage recipe. I altered them and made them into thumbprint cookies to add a spot for the frosting.

makes a stiff batter

drop into balls

use the tip of a spoon


use your thumb

frosted and adorned

Ingredients for Double Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 oz melted chocolate (or 6 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder plus 2 TBS butter or coconut oil)
1/3 cup buttermilk (I used powdered buttermilk.)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
In a mixing bowl, beat the butte, sugar, egg, chocolate, buttermilk and vanilla.
Stir in the dry ingredients and mix just until blended. This makes a stiff batter.
Add chocolate chips and stir by hand.
Drop by rounded tablespoons onto a parchment lined (or greased) baking sheet.
Use the tip of a spoon to create a dent – or your thumb.
Bake 7 – 8 minutes until done. This is a hot oven, so watch them carefully.
Take them off the pans and let them cool on a wire rack.
When cool, frost and decorate any way you like.

Cream Cheese Frosting (small batch)
2 TBS butter
2 oz Cream cheese
dash salt
1 TBS milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1-2 cups powdered sugar until stiff

coconut and sprinkles on top

Mix these in a small bowl with a hand mixer.
Add just enough powdered sugar for the frosting to hold its’ shape and no more.
Garnish with nuts, coconut, sprinkles or whatever you like.

Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Urban Legend or Legendary Recipe… you decide.

I pledged to bake cookies for the winner of an auction at our church. The money raised is going to help students go on mission trips. A great cause which I’ve embraced for three years now.

Neiman Marcus Cookies


Before I could make a few cookie suggestions, Chuck, the eager auction winner, sent this recipe as a request for my first cookie “deposit.” The Neiman Marcus Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe is an urban legend that has been around for several decades. It’s similar to the Mrs. Field’s Cookie recipe which has also circled the globe.

dark chocolate and mint chips


I made the recipe exactly as is because it was a request, but anyone who follows this blog knows that it is nearly impossible for me to follow a recipe AS IS. And because there was so much batter, I eventually had to divide it into two bowls, so I used different chips in half. A few additional suggestions follow the recipe below.

Grated Hershey bar added little

Over flowing mixer

one tablespoon sized scoop

Nieman Marcus Cookies – original recipe
Makes 10 dozen (no kidding!)
2 c butter
2 c sugar
2 c brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
4 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
5 c blended oatmeal
1 8-oz Hershey bar (grated)
3 c chopped nuts
24 oz chocolate chips (You may want to divide the batter and use different chips in each half. Pictured are one batch wtih semi sweet chips and one with dark chocolate and mint chips.)

Directions
Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
Cream butter and both sugars.
Add eggs and vanilla.
Mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda.
Add chocolate chips, Hershey bar, and nuts.
Roll into balls and place 2 in apart on a cookie sheet. (I used a 1 TBS scoop.)
Bake at 375 for 10 min.
Makes 112 cookies.
Recipe may be halved.

The cookies were delicious, but naturally I have several opinions about them which you may want to consider.
Nana Clare’s Notes:1. They suggest that you might want to cut the recipe in half. Might? This makes 10 dozen, so unless you have a crowd of cooie monsters at the ready, do consider halving it. Or make the batter and freeze in balls. Then bake as you desire, a few nibbles at a time.

2. The huge grated Hershey bar was a pain because my food processor stopped after the first pulse and I had to “grate” these by hand. But regardless, I didn’t think the milk chocolate bar added much flavor so I would ditch it.
3. The recipe was so enormous that eventually I had to divide it into two bowls. I used the traditional semi sweet chips in one bowl and put the dark chocolate and mint chips in the other. That was a winner! The batch that I took to a church function disappeared quickly and people really seemed to enjoy the mint. Butterscotch or other chips would work well too.
4.I thought grinding the oatmeal was a wasted step. Personally, I love oats and enjoy seeing them in baked goods.
5. The cookies would retain their moistness more easily if some of the sugar was changed out for honey.
6. Finally, I would have swapped out some of the white flour for some whole wheat pastry flour, just so I could pretend these are “health foods.”